rarepuppers: lets talk about content

EDIT: We're going to be trialling some of these rules starting today (3/2/19); We'll be making some changes to automod and changing up the way we moderate some content; Please let us know if you have any feedback on this!!

hi friends!

today we're gonna take a little break from the very lighthearted tone of the sub to talk a little bit about what exactly rarepuppers is and the content and community of this sub

it seems unfathomable to many of us on the mod team and in the community that we're currently pushing 1.2 million subscribers! seems like so recently we had a few thousand and were just a tiny meme sub, now we're one of the 200 biggest subs on the site!

however one thing that a lot of people have noticed (and that the mods have been in deep discussion about) is that the content has changed very much over time;

a couple of years ago every post title was in pupperspeak, all animols were well represented and memes reigned supreme

at the moment the content looks very much like a dogs-only version of /r/aww, titles and all

and while there's nothing wrong with /r/aww (on the contrary it's an awesome sub!), that's not what rarepuppers should be in our opinion, and in what seems to be the growing opinion of the community

So: what can we do to make the sub more like when it was a small/niche sub? And are people going to be happy with the changes?

As a mod team we've talked about this a lot and have a few ideas, we're looking for community feedback on them before we implement everything

Proposed new rules:

Posts that are just "Reddit, meet (my dog)" will not be allowed any more - tell us why your pup is rare, not just their name

Puppertalk will be heavily encouraged in titles - Titles that are too long and "well written" so to speak may be removed

"Sob stories" will be removed - We're seeing a lot of content with titles written to garner "sympathy/support" - This sub is and always has been a positive + happy place, so we're going to be curating posts like these out

No Low effort/stolen content - Badly screenshotted/stolen content will be removed, this will include obvious promotion of social media and rips from big accounts like weratedogs etc.

No Human focused content (ie selfies) - While rarepuppers is for animols of all kinds, hoomans aren't one of them, please make sure the focus is the pup not you or one of your friends!

No Excessively x-posted/reposted content - We're going to be more active about removing heavily reposted/x-posted content; No-one likes scrolling down the frontpage and seeing the same post 5 times on different subs

Now while this might seem like a lot of changes, we've been on and off doing similar curation to this in the background for a while as trial;

Realistically it hasn't caused much of a change, hence why we'd like to try to do it more actively and openly

Also while it might look like we have a big mod team we only have a few active mods; If you see content that you think breaks the rules, please report it to let us know!

I guess we're looking for some feedback as well as letting everyone know how we're feeling about the sub at the moment;

Please let us know below what you think and whether you agree/disagree with some of the changes and/or have other suggestions!

Just to speak for the other side of things, I'm here for the dog version of /r/aww. I'm not subscribed there because I don't really super want babies showing up on my feed, and there's a lot of that there, along with other animals I don't really find as cute as dogs.

My exact thoughts. There is PLENTY of things I don't like on Reddit, and just in general, but I just stay clear of them and I find I'm better off. What's the point of getting upset on Reddit when you can just click somewhere else and engage in something that interests you?

I like all of the proposed rules and direction, especially the sob stories one. While some of what's been posted in recent weeks isn't quite grief posts, there has been quite a bit of "It's been xxx since my pupper passed" or similar and I don't come here to see those, I come to laugh and appreciate all the unique and funny animals and, dare I say it, pupperspeak too.

I'm really glad that the moderation team is seeing the change that I've been seeing as rarepuppers has increased in popularity. I unsubscribed from r/aww many years ago because of:

Heart breaking "we had to say goodbye to <pet>" type content

Posts of literally just an animal sitting there - I could just do a Google Image search for dogs to get the same effect

As it sits at the time of making this comment, Rarepuppers sorted by Hot doesn't look half bad: plenty of funny pictures of animals doing silly things which, in my mind, is what Rarepuppers is all about (maybe there should be a more of a slant towards "rare" though).

But there's definitely days where it most of the posts ARE just a picture of a dog doing nothing particularly interesting. I usually ignore everything posted by users without a flair on those days.

Anyone remember when those borzoi dogs were gathering supporters in preparation for a conflict, and you had to swear allegiance to a faction? That was a random, weird, fun thing, but would never happen again in the current state of this subreddit.

I think what tends to happen with any medium really is the thing (subreddit, game, movie, book series, etc.):

starts out as a small, niche thing

grows in popularity, becomes kind of a "cult"

attracts more and more people who aren't quite as die hard supporters

supporters are shunned away from their own community

So I'm in favor of all the proposed rules 100% and basically my tl;dr is normies get out reee

Inevitably on ANY post that doesn't feature a dog prominently there will be someone in the comments with a snarky "huh that's a weird looking dog" or "is this allowed in this subreddit?" I try to mention the first line in the sidebar when I see those comments, but that's not going after the root cause. I think there should be more emphasis that this subreddit isn't r/aww : the sequel to avoid this confusion.